THE TORCH BEARER (REMEMBERING SIDNEY POITIER)
Sidney Poitier was more than just a movie star.
He was a torch bearer for those who believed in a more diverse and inclusive cinema.
A leading man in Hollywood at a time when African Americans were taking to the streets to demand civil rights, he shattered glass ceilings and paved the way for future generations of black movie stars, writers and directors.
Poitier was the first black male actor to win a Best Actor Academy Award.
But he also used his charismatic screen presence and position of influence to address uncomfortable issues about racism in Hollywood and the US.
Born in the US in 1927, his family were tomato farmers in the Bahamas who used to travel to Florida regularly to sell their wares.
Sidney was born two months premature in Miami and was not expected to survive but his parents stayed in the city for three months to ensure he did.
When he was discharged from hospital, the family returned to the Bahamas, which was a British Crown dependency, living on Cat Island but he was entitled to American citizenship by dint of being born in Florida.
At the age of 10, the family moved to Nassau in the Bahamas where his father worked as a cabbie and it was their first exposure to cars, paved roads, electricity, plumbing, fridges and the movies.
Raised a Catholic but later describing his views as agnostic, he left school at the age of 12 to generate additional income for the family as they struggled to make ends meet.
Sidney initially found work in the Bahamas as a labourer.
Fearing his son might fall into a life of delinquency after a friend of Sidney’s was sent to reform school, his father dispatched him, aged 15, to Miami to live with his brother’s family.
And after a summer spent washing dishes in a camp in Georgia, he headed north to New York where he slept rough in bus stations and did menial jobs until he had enough money to rent a room.
Working as a dishwasher, he was taken under the wing of a waiter who patiently sat with him, teaching him how to read a newspaper.
Facing a harsh New York winter without warm clothing, Sidney looked to the Army as a means of escaping a life of poverty and lied about his age as he enlisted in 1943 during World War II.
Poitier’s role within the Army was as an orderly in a mental health facility and feeling out of place, he had to feign insanity to secure a discharge.
Returning to New York, he risked sliding back into poverty when, on an impulse, he auditioned for the Harlem based American Negro Theater which would nurture the talents of actors like Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis and Harry Belafonte.
The company put on plays by writers like Sean O’Casey, Eugene O’Neill and John Millington Synge.
Convinced that being an actor offered him a better life, he continued to work on his reading while holding down jobs as a dishwasher and listened to the radio, modifying his accent.
Six months later, Poitier returned and offered to work as a janitor in return for acting lessons.
Initially sceptical about his ability to be an actor, the company relented and when Harry Belafonte left to take up an opportunity, they suddenly looked to Sidney to plug the gap.
Poitier grabbed his opportunity and immediately caught the eye of a Broadway director who offered him a small part in an all-black production of the Greek tragedy ‘Lysistrata’.
Although he fluffed his lines on opening night, Sidney impressed the audience and critics so much with his stage presence during its short run, he landed an understudy part in a touring production of ‘Anna Lucasta’.
This was to cement Poitier’s place in the African American acting community and land him first feature film role in Joseph L Mankiewicz’s 1950 film noir ‘No Way Out’ alongside Richard Widmark and Linda Darnell.
As a debut film role, it established Poitier as a trail blazer for black actors - not only offering him a substantial part but also one that confronted contemporary racist attitudes.
He followed this a year later with a role in Zoltán Korda’s acclaimed British made South African Family drama ‘Cry the Beloved Country’ in which he starred alongside Canada Lee as two religious ministers who confront the harsh reality of poverty and apartheid.
His big breakthrough role was as a rebellious student in Richard Brooks’ gritty 1955 high school drama ‘Blackboard Jungle’ with Glenn Ford.
Stanley Kramer directed him in 1958 alongside Tony Curtis in ‘The Defiant Ones’ as two escapee prisoners shackled together in an obvious analogy for race relations.
Poitier and Curtis both landed Best Actor Oscar nominations and he also captured the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival and a BAFTA for the box office hit.
Now established as a Hollywood star who was breaking down barriers, he was cast by Otto Preminger as Porgy in his 1958 adaptation of George Gershwin’s musical ‘Porgy and Bess’ with Dorothy Daringer and Sammi Davis Jr and nabbed a Golden Globe nomination.
Sidney had already performed the role two years earlier on Broadway to much acclaim
In 1963, Poitier made history by becoming the first black actor to win a Best Actor Oscar for his role as a jack of all trades who stumbles across some nuns in the Arizona desert in Ralph Nelson’s acclaimed drama ‘Lillies of the Field’.
With the period sex comedy ‘Tom Jones’ sweeping the awards, Albert Finley had been expected to win the Oscar but there was real excitement when Anne Bancroft declared Poitier’s victory which came 24 years after Hattie McDaniel blazed a trail for African Americans by winning the Best Supporting Actress gong for ‘Gone With the Wind’.
In a memorably short and humble acceptance speech, an emotional Poitier alluded to a “long journey” to the Oscar and his indebtedness to “countless people” behind the film, before signing off with a very special thank you to the Academy.
However the significance of the victory was not lost on him and other actors or on a US which was trying to break through prejudices and provide equal opportunity.
Now a major league star, he was a lead opposite Richard Widmark in James B Harris’ 1965 Cold War naval thriller ‘The Bedford Incident’.
In Guy Green’s 1965 drama ‘A Patch of Blue’, Poitier played a softly spoken man who has an interracial relationship with Elizabeth Hartman’s blind teenager.
The film, which would be one of the most commercially successful in his career, received huge acclaim and earned Shelley Winters a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her performance as a prostitute who is the girl’s disapproving mother.
But it also demonstrated Poitier’s fearlessness in tackling racial taboos - although a scene where the lovers share a kiss was cut by censors in some southern US states.
Sidney teamed up again with Ralph Nelson for the well received 1966 Western ‘Duel at Diabolo’ with James Garner, Bobo Andersson and Dennis Weaver.
A year later, he played a teacher in a tough east End of London school in James Clavell’s hit classroom drama ‘To Sir With Love’ which featured the singer Lulu in the cast.
He would reprise the role of Mark Thackeray for director Peter Bogdanovich in 1997 for a CBS made for TV movie ‘To Sir With Love II’ with Daniel J Travanti, which saw him relocate to a tough inner city Chicago school.
It’s no holds barred portrayal of institutional racism in the police not only won the Academy Award for Best Picture but a Best Actor gong for Steiger and also spawned two sequels and eventually a TV series with a new cast.
The first sequel, Gordon Douglas’ 1970 film ‘They Call Me Mister Tibbs!’ saw Poitier’s character investigate the murder of a prostitute in San Francisco, with Martin Landau’s preacher the prime suspect.
It drew a mixed critical reaction but did reasonably well at the box office.
In Don Medford’s 1971 thrilller ‘The Organization’, Tibbs investigates a company that is suspected of being a front for drug dealing but the movie was panned by the critics.
Poitier capped a memorable year in 1967 by appearing opposite Hollywood acting royalty Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Stanley Kramer’s comedy drama ‘Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner’.
Once again, he was in a hit movie that confronted racial taboos - in this case the older generation’s discomfort with inter-racial relationships - and it remains a firm favourite of TV audiences to this day.
While Poitier’s success was a source of great pride to many Americans of all racial backgrounds, there was a bit of a backlash among some critics, including in the African American community, who felt the roles he chose were too noble.
His first marriage to Juanita Hardy, with whom he fathered four daughters, ended in 1965 after five years and it later emerged that for nine years he had had an affair with the actress Diahann Carroll.
Sidney would later marry Canadian actress Joanna Shimkus in 1976 with whom he would have two daughters.
During the 1970s, he also began to flex his muscle in the industry and dabble in directing.
His 1972 filmmaking debut was a post American Civil War Western, ‘Buck and the Preacher’ with him starring alongside his friend Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee.
Breaking new ground with African American Western heroes, it drew a mixed critical response and struggled at the box office, souring his relationship with Columbia Pictures.
He would return a year later as a director and lead of a London-set romantic drama, ‘A Warm December’ with Esther Anderson.
One of his most successful films as a director followed in 1974, with the action comedy ‘Uptown Saturday Night’ in which he starred alongside Bill Cosby, Harry Belafonte and in a smaller role, Richard Pryor.
The film would spawn a trilogy of New York comedies directed by Sidney in which he starred alongside Cosby - 1975’s low budget smash hit ‘Let’s Do It Again’ which had a Curtis Mayfield soundtrack and ‘A Piece of the Action’ in 1977 with James Earl Jones.
The rights to remake all three films currently rest with Will Smith who has been trying to secure Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence and other leading African American actors.
Sidney’s special relationship with Britain would see him awarded a knighthood in 1974.
During this period, Poitier starred in just one film he did not direct.
Ralph Nelson’s 1975 Apartheid drama ‘The Wilby Conspiracy’ with Michael Caine and Rutger Hauer, was his third collaboration with the director.
In 1980, he stayed behind the camera and enjoyed one of the biggest successes he ever had as a director with the prison comedy ‘Stir Crazy’ starring Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder, JoBeth Williams and Craig T Nelson.
More interested in directing films, Sidney’s appearances in front of the camera became less frequent.
In 1982, he made the so-so comedy ‘Hanky Panky’ with Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner and Richard Widmark which stuttered at the box office and with critics.
Poitier’s 1985 teenage dance film ‘Fast Forward’ with Don Franklin failed to set the box office alight.
As an actor, he would enjoy a box office hit and good reviews alongside Tom Berenger and Kirstie Alley in Canadian director Roger Spotiswoode’s taut 1988 thriller ‘Shoot to Kill’ (or ‘Deadly Pursuit’ as it was known on the other side of the Atlantic) in which he played an FBI agent pursuing a killer through the forests of Washington state.
That year there was another role as an FBI agent in Richard Benjamin’s critically lambasted Cold War thriller ‘Little Nikita’ with River Phoenix and Richard Jenkins.
Poitier’s last outing as a director was 1990’s critically panned comedy ‘Ghost Dad’ with Bill Cosby and Ian Bannen.
Typecast as law enforcement figures on the big screen, Sidney found more meaty roles on TV, landing an Emmy nomination for his performance as the celebrated lawyer Thurgood Marshall in the ABC two-part miniseries about his legal challenge against segregated schooling.
‘Separate But Equal’ also starred Burt Lancaster, while the real life Marshall became the United States’ first African American Supreme Court Judge.
Sidney donned a Stetson once more for the 1995 CBS Western miniseries as a bounty hunter standing up for African American families facing the Jim Crow laws in ‘Children of the Dust’ which also starred Michael Moriarty.
On the big screen in 1992, Phil Alden Robinson cast him as a former CIA director in the hi-tech thriller ‘Sneakers’ with Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, Mary McDonnell, River Phoenix and David Strathairn.
Poitier’s final feature film role was as a FBI deputy director in Michael Caton-Jones’ commercially successful 1997 remake of ‘The Day of the Jackal’ with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere who sported the dodgiest of Irish accents.
Between 1995 and 2003, he served on the board of the Walt Disney Company, while in 1997 Sidney embarked on a diplomatic career as the Ambassador for the Bahamas in Japan, remaining in post for 10 years.
Five years later, he also accepted a position as the Bahamas Ambassador to UNESCO, fulfilling duties in the role until 2007.
Poitier continued to act in small screen roles, appearing as Nelson Mandela to Michael Caine’s FW de Klerk in Showtime’s South African peace process TV movie ‘Mandela and De Klerk’.
Oprah Winfrey talked him into appearing as a psychiatrist in an ABC remake she produced of ‘David and Lisa’ with Brittany Murphy and Alison Janney.
In the 1999 CBS TV movie ‘The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn’ with Mary Louise Parker and Diane Wiest, Poitier played a Georgia carpenter who a developer tries to have declared mentally unstable as he resists attempts to seize his land.
That year he appeared alongside his daughter Sydney Tamiia Poitier in the ‘Pygmalion’ Showtime TV movie ‘Free of Eden’ as a former teacher turned businessman who helps a teenager better herself to escape the ghetto.
There was a similar role in the 2001 CBS TV movie ‘The Last Brickmaker In America’ with Piper Laurie and Jay O Sanders as a widower who becomes a mentor to a 13 year old boy.
He also picked up a Grammy that year for Best Album in the Spoken Word for his autobiography ‘The Measure of A Man’ whose book Oprah Winfrey had also championed.
A year later, his place among Holywood’s greats was cemented when Sidney was awarded an Honorary Oscar in recognition of his “extraordinary performances and unique presence on the screen and for representing the industry with dignity, style and intelligence.”
President Barrack Obama also garlanded him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and in 2016, he received a BAFTA Fellowship.
In recent years Sidney suffered ill health and his frailty was apparent when he received his BAFTA fellowship from Jamie Foxx in 2016 on video.
In Don Medford’s 1971 thrilller ‘The Organization’, Tibbs investigates a company that is suspected of being a front for drug dealing but the movie was panned by the critics.
Poitier capped a memorable year in 1967 by appearing opposite Hollywood acting royalty Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Stanley Kramer’s comedy drama ‘Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner’.
Once again, he was in a hit movie that confronted racial taboos - in this case the older generation’s discomfort with inter-racial relationships - and it remains a firm favourite of TV audiences to this day.
While Poitier’s success was a source of great pride to many Americans of all racial backgrounds, there was a bit of a backlash among some critics, including in the African American community, who felt the roles he chose were too noble.
Sidney would later marry Canadian actress Joanna Shimkus in 1976 with whom he would have two daughters.
During the 1970s, he also began to flex his muscle in the industry and dabble in directing.
His 1972 filmmaking debut was a post American Civil War Western, ‘Buck and the Preacher’ with him starring alongside his friend Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee.
Breaking new ground with African American Western heroes, it drew a mixed critical response and struggled at the box office, souring his relationship with Columbia Pictures.
He would return a year later as a director and lead of a London-set romantic drama, ‘A Warm December’ with Esther Anderson.
One of his most successful films as a director followed in 1974, with the action comedy ‘Uptown Saturday Night’ in which he starred alongside Bill Cosby, Harry Belafonte and in a smaller role, Richard Pryor.
The rights to remake all three films currently rest with Will Smith who has been trying to secure Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence and other leading African American actors.
Sidney’s special relationship with Britain would see him awarded a knighthood in 1974.
During this period, Poitier starred in just one film he did not direct.
Ralph Nelson’s 1975 Apartheid drama ‘The Wilby Conspiracy’ with Michael Caine and Rutger Hauer, was his third collaboration with the director.
In 1980, he stayed behind the camera and enjoyed one of the biggest successes he ever had as a director with the prison comedy ‘Stir Crazy’ starring Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder, JoBeth Williams and Craig T Nelson.
More interested in directing films, Sidney’s appearances in front of the camera became less frequent.
Poitier’s 1985 teenage dance film ‘Fast Forward’ with Don Franklin failed to set the box office alight.
As an actor, he would enjoy a box office hit and good reviews alongside Tom Berenger and Kirstie Alley in Canadian director Roger Spotiswoode’s taut 1988 thriller ‘Shoot to Kill’ (or ‘Deadly Pursuit’ as it was known on the other side of the Atlantic) in which he played an FBI agent pursuing a killer through the forests of Washington state.
That year there was another role as an FBI agent in Richard Benjamin’s critically lambasted Cold War thriller ‘Little Nikita’ with River Phoenix and Richard Jenkins.
Poitier’s last outing as a director was 1990’s critically panned comedy ‘Ghost Dad’ with Bill Cosby and Ian Bannen.
Typecast as law enforcement figures on the big screen, Sidney found more meaty roles on TV, landing an Emmy nomination for his performance as the celebrated lawyer Thurgood Marshall in the ABC two-part miniseries about his legal challenge against segregated schooling.
‘Separate But Equal’ also starred Burt Lancaster, while the real life Marshall became the United States’ first African American Supreme Court Judge.
On the big screen in 1992, Phil Alden Robinson cast him as a former CIA director in the hi-tech thriller ‘Sneakers’ with Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, Mary McDonnell, River Phoenix and David Strathairn.
Poitier’s final feature film role was as a FBI deputy director in Michael Caton-Jones’ commercially successful 1997 remake of ‘The Day of the Jackal’ with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere who sported the dodgiest of Irish accents.
Between 1995 and 2003, he served on the board of the Walt Disney Company, while in 1997 Sidney embarked on a diplomatic career as the Ambassador for the Bahamas in Japan, remaining in post for 10 years.
Five years later, he also accepted a position as the Bahamas Ambassador to UNESCO, fulfilling duties in the role until 2007.
Poitier continued to act in small screen roles, appearing as Nelson Mandela to Michael Caine’s FW de Klerk in Showtime’s South African peace process TV movie ‘Mandela and De Klerk’.
Oprah Winfrey talked him into appearing as a psychiatrist in an ABC remake she produced of ‘David and Lisa’ with Brittany Murphy and Alison Janney.
In the 1999 CBS TV movie ‘The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn’ with Mary Louise Parker and Diane Wiest, Poitier played a Georgia carpenter who a developer tries to have declared mentally unstable as he resists attempts to seize his land.
That year he appeared alongside his daughter Sydney Tamiia Poitier in the ‘Pygmalion’ Showtime TV movie ‘Free of Eden’ as a former teacher turned businessman who helps a teenager better herself to escape the ghetto.
There was a similar role in the 2001 CBS TV movie ‘The Last Brickmaker In America’ with Piper Laurie and Jay O Sanders as a widower who becomes a mentor to a 13 year old boy.
He also picked up a Grammy that year for Best Album in the Spoken Word for his autobiography ‘The Measure of A Man’ whose book Oprah Winfrey had also championed.
A year later, his place among Holywood’s greats was cemented when Sidney was awarded an Honorary Oscar in recognition of his “extraordinary performances and unique presence on the screen and for representing the industry with dignity, style and intelligence.”
President Barrack Obama also garlanded him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and in 2016, he received a BAFTA Fellowship.
In recent years Sidney suffered ill health and his frailty was apparent when he received his BAFTA fellowship from Jamie Foxx in 2016 on video.
While he battled ill health, his standing in US cinema remained high and he was an inspiration to many African American actors and filmmakers across the generation span.
Poitier broke the racial glass ceiling as a leading man but he did so with style, grace and determination.
(Sidney Poitier passed away at the age of 94 on January 6, 2022)
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